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Pontiac rebuilt the Firebird four separate times in 35 years, surviving two gas crises and a movie-fueled sales boom that forced GM to delay an entire redesign. This retrospective traces every generation, from the 325-hp 1967 Ram Air 400 to the record-setting late-90s WS6 Trans Ams, right up to the federal safety rule that finally ended the run in 2002.
A third-generation Camaro spent three decades untouched in a garage, and when the grime came off it revealed barely-broken-in mileage from the model year that saved Chevrolet’s F-body reputation. Here’s the real story behind the IROC-Z badge, and why this find has collectors talking six-figure-adjacent numbers.
Before the Road Runner or GTX existed, Plymouth offered its 425-hp Street Hemi in the understated 1966 Satellite, and only 503 four-speed hardtops were ever built. Owner Randy Cook found one identical to the car he watched race as a kid and traded his own car to get it. Lou Costabile takes a ride in the Forest Green Hemi that makes two grown men laugh the moment the hood goes up.
A 1970 Ranchero GT with a Drag Pack 429 Super Cobra Jet is a truck almost nobody ordered: fewer than 5% of Ranchero GTs got any 429 at all, and Ford rated this one at 375 horsepower it plainly made more of. Muscle Car Of The Week walks around an untouched Dark Ivy Green survivor, factory inspection stamps and all.
Ford handed a compact Fairlane a NASCAR-spec 427 and built exactly 100 of them for one job: winning at the strip. The catch was hidden right on the front of the car, where the headlights should have been. Here’s how the 1964 Fairlane Thunderbolt used disguised air intakes and radical weight cuts to run 11s in period — and still command six figures at auction today.
Only 2,743 buyers ordered the R/T package on a 1971 Dodge Charger, and just 63 of those left the factory with a 426 Hemi under a mandatory RamCharger hood. Steve Dulcich’s own ‘Golden Boy’ is one of the survivors still doing exactly what Dodge built it to do — getting driven, hard, on the open road.
A Cleveland engine shop is turning genuine 797-horsepower Hellcat Redeye HEMIs into complete, pre-wired units that ship on a pallet and bolt into nearly any Challenger. The clip proves the concept about as literally as possible, firing the motor with nothing else attached. Here’s what’s actually inside the swap, and why Dodge never sold this powertrain as a standalone option.
The Chevelle arrived in 1964 with a 220-horsepower 283 and a mission to haul families. Fourteen years later it had produced the highest horsepower figure Detroit ever printed on a factory spec sheet, a 427-powered street car with no badges at all, and 53 NASCAR wins. This is the full arc of Chevrolet’s most contradictory nameplate.
Plymouth priced the Road Runner to undercut everything else on the showroom floor, then quietly offered a 390-horsepower triple-carburetor 440 for $250 more. Fewer than 2,000 buyers in 1970 said yes. Nick’s Garage just put a numbers-matching survivor back on public road, pistol-grip shifter, vinyl bench seat and all.
The 2026 Dodge Charger R/T swaps its Hemi V8 for a 420-horsepower twin-turbo six branded SIXPACK, a name Dodge borrowed from a legendary three-carburetor 440 V8 option from 1969. A veteran reviewer tested the ,000 loaded version, and the comment section couldn’t agree on whether it still counts as a muscle car.
